Joseph: Trump's Indictment Coincides with the Anniversary of an Event That Should Have Made It Impossible
Thursday, June 15, marks the 808th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, a great step forward for the rule of law.
This longstanding legal protection includes the right to a fair and public hearing and the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment or arbitrary arrest, detention or deprivation of property.
So it’s a sad irony that this week also marks a discreditable step backward from the Magna Carta’s groundbreaking recognition of our right to equal standing before the law.
Can we say that the indictment of presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is arbitrary? Is it based on a search and seizure not in accord with the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment?
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Looks like this indictment is unconstitutional. Looks like it’s a cleverly convoluted and culpable exercise in unlawful and unjustified confiscation and entrapment.
How did this happen?
Justice Benjamin Curtis, in his famous dissent from Dred Scott (1857), appealed to the Fifth Amendment’s due process, which, he said, is not peculiar to the Constitution of the United States:
“It was borrowed from Magna Charta; was brought to America by our ancestors, as part of their inherited liberties, and has existed in all the States, usually in the very words of the great charter.”
Regrettably, the Department of Justice has deteriorated into a Department of Petty Prosecutions operating arbitrarily, in league with a ruling party every bit as crooked and corrupt as the infamous King John.
The U.S. legal system has reneged on the Magna Carta principle that applies common law protections to all “per legem terræ,” i.e., according to the law of the land — and not at the mere will of a corrupted Justice Department in cooperation with a political party wielding despotic power.
Selective application of the law
Special counsel Jack Smith is not impartial.
When he says, “We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everybody,” he is being disingenuous. He is ignoring the selective application of the law utilized scandalously to indict the leading political opponent of the Democratic Party.
The sprawling charges (37 counts of criminal acts, sufficient to put Trump in jail for 400 years) are suspiciously capacious. Why? To ensure that there is one that can be contrived somehow to stick?
The 14th Amendment’s equality clause was explained in Truax v. Corrigan (1921): “Our whole system of law is predicated on the general fundamental principle of equality of application of the law.”
“The framers and adopters of this amendment were not content to depend on a mere minimum secured by the due process clause, or upon the spirit of equality which might not be insisted on by local public opinion. They therefore embodied that spirit in a specific guaranty.”
That “guaranty” was to protect against, inter alia, “hostile discrimination.”
Justice Stanley Matthews, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), spoke to both the due process and equality clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment:
“These provisions are universal in their application to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction … and the equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws. “
In other words, due process alone is not enough.
In going so rashly after Trump, the DOJ has abandoned its most serious obligation to provide the additional guarantee of the equality clause.
Equality before the law is not “whataboutism.”
When someone raises unfair inequalities in the way Trump is being treated, it is disparaged as “whataboutism.”
It’s not.
It’s about the serious legal obligation to hold every person to the same standard.
Wrongdoers pointing out others breaking the law does not make them less criminal. But when we tolerate and apply two standards of justice, we can engineer and condone just such an anomaly.
A politicized DOJ can magnify an indiscreet and possibly unlawful action by Trump into a prosecutable and punishable crime. At the same time, by employing a different standard of justice, it can continue to ignore indiscreet and dangerously unlawful practices by then-Vice President Joe Biden and then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.
Currently exacerbating this problem of two standards of justice is the establishment media’s political bias, which overwhelmingly sides with the Biden administration and refuses to pressure it for accountability.
Where is the justification?
We can’t have two conflicting standards of justice and say that justice is done.
Democracy can’t survive if machinations like these at the highest levels of the law are allowed to continue, irrespective of whichever party is in power.
The DOJ’s unjustified targeting of the opposition party’s leading presidential candidate on flimsy issues constitutes unwarranted interference in a presidential election. This phony prosecution of Trump extends from the Russia collusion hoax and amounts to political persecution.
Why was Trump indicted on the same day the House released evidence that Biden and his son each got $5 million in bribes from Burisma? Why have the investigations of Biden family corruption been blocked repeatedly by the DOJ?
Trump retained documents that were never used to inflict harm. Biden is alleged to have taken bribes to alter U.S. policies and put the republic at risk.
In demonstrating excessively obeisant allegiance to the party currently in power, the DOJ has sunk to an unprecedented corruption of the rule of law.
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